"Build Trust When Risk Is Low. Leverage It When the Stakes Are High." w/Scott Mann

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Scott Mann — former U.S. Army Green Beret, founder of Rooftop Leadership, host of the Scott Mann Podcast, and author of the New York Times bestseller Operation Pineapple Express and the new book The Generosity of Scars — joins Dr. Matt Paden on the Bad Days Leadership podcast. Scott shares the mission in Afghanistan that cost a teammate his life and the questions that have never stopped since, the moment a junior captain told him to slow down and drink the tea when he'd forgotten his own golden rule, and how losing his purpose after leaving the military led him to standing in a closet with a pistol under his chin. He breaks down why performative leadership creates a zero-defect culture that kills risk-taking, the three red flags he spots the second he walks into an executive room, and how storytelling literally saved his life then saved his friend James's life in the middle of Manhattan traffic. Plus, why the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Every leader has bad days. Most pretend they don't. This is a show where leaders stop pretending and start learning. Welcome to the Bad Days Leadership Podcast, where leaders pull back the curtain on decisions they cringe about, runes they misread, and the failures that shaped everything after. Real leaders, real mistakes, real lessons. Because you can't become a great leader without a few bad days. Welcome back to the Bad Days Leadership Podcast, the show where we stop pretending leadership is easy, we stop pretending that leaders are perfect, and we start learning real lessons from those moments that didn't go as we had planned. I am your host, Dr. Matt Payton, and I am super excited to have today's guest with me. He is someone who understands high-stakes leadership better than most. Today our guest is Lieutenant Colonel Retired Scott Mann, a former U.S. Army Green Beret who served multiple tours around the world, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Peru. And now he is a warrior storyteller. He's the founder of Rooftop Leadership and the Scott Man Leadership Academy. He's also the host of the Scott Mann podcast. He's authored several really impactful books, including his newest, which we'll talk about today, which I uh received just a couple days ago and have already poured into, uh dove into a lot of this, uh, The Generosity of Scars, how your struggles can, how your stories of struggle can change lives, especially your own. It's a wonderful book. He's also written Nobody Is Coming to Save You, and the New York Times bestseller, Operation Pineapple Express. Scott, welcome to the Bad Days Leadership Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Hey, thanks for having me on, Matt. I'm coming at you from Lake Washita, Arkansas, and uh you'll probably see some activity going on behind me here. But this is a week that we get away uh every year with our kiddos. And I got kids in the Army, federal law enforcement, and fire department, and they all come off the road and we all come together and just uh, you know, we're funny. We did a version of what you're talking about last night around the fire pit, talking about the rough days and what we learned from them. And uh I appreciate you and what you do, man. It's a great message.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Well, thank you very much. Uh, let me say this at the very beginning. Uh appreciate your service. Thank you for your service to our country. And as you just said, it sounds like you have others who are serving our country uh in a variety of contexts and your family. So thank you to you and your family. And I hope uh hope you have a great time away with them uh this week. Uh appreciate you in the middle of all that jumping in with us to talk about some things and some lessons that we can learn from those moments that are uh not always the best, uh not always the most exciting, not always easy to think about. But I'd love for you to uh jump in with us here and maybe tell us about a leadership decision. Okay, a leadership decision that as you think back, you still it still bothers you. You still cringe about it, you still wish maybe you had done it a little differently. Let's start there. Maybe you can tell us a story about a leadership moment that you still uh cringe about.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, I I don't, you know, I guess the the there's plenty of them. There's no shortage of them, certainly in the military. Um I I'd say probably the one that uh comes to mind so close to Memorial Day, uh was the the the loss of a of a teammate uh Alan Johnson on a mission in south central Afghanistan during a big operation called Nam Dong, and um Alan and his team were inserted um into a uh high mountain area to go after a a set of m targets that were had already killed Americans and uh we really wanted and needed these guys removed from the battlefield, and and Alan and his team were um selected to to basically be inserted and and run these guys down, and they did that, and they did it extremely well, and they found themselves um uh in hot pursuit of these guys. Uh they got down in some very rocky terrain and and lost communications, which was you know never a good thing, and then uh and then found themselves pinned down in an ambush. They had they had basically kind of run into an ambush and uh and were pinned down and Alan broke through all of that and put down suppressive fire and enough so that his teammates could withdraw. And then he was shot mortally wounded uh as he made his X-Fill after ensuring that his teammates were were out. He was a very junior guy on the team compared to the you know the other guys on the team, but yet he made this extraordinary move to to free his teammates up so they could break contact. And and then of course there was the the task of of carrying Alan out, which his teammates did. And uh, you know, for me, the like memorial, this was years ago. This was 2005 when this happened, the spring of 2005, and then but there isn't a day that goes by where you as the you know, like me as the mission commander, you don't you don't you don't think about that, and you don't, you know, you wonder like you know, what are his kids doing on Memorial Day? You know, they don't have their dad, they don't have uh him around, his wife doesn't have him around. And you know, you wonder, could I have been faster, could I have been more resourceful, could I have been more creative, could I have been more responsive? Was there another way to to do that mission? You know, um, could we have used you know operational fires instead of a team? Uh and you know, it's it's one of those things that like you never I don't I don't suspect I'll ever have those thoughts and those you know questionings of I I don't say that I cringe really. I it's more of a it's kind of a dull ache. And but you you question, you know, you question your decisions from the from the outset of the mission conception all the way through the responsiveness and you just over and over like it's never ends, and you're constantly reviewing it in your mind. And you know, to the point like I'll have to just stop myself, and or my wife Monty will just have to say, hey, you know, like that's not what Alan would want you doing. It's not what he would, you know, um, he would not want you doing that, and and then I'm able to kind of come out of it. But for me, and that's not the only one, unfortunately, there's there's more than one of those, but um that's what I go back to when I think about you know leadership decisions that you you question. Uh and again, I don't necessarily cringe, Matt, but I I feel it just it's it's this it's this questioning of one's own leadership decisions and the process and could I've done this and could I have done that? And um the never-ending cycle that I guess I'll carry to the grave with me.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah, I I appreciate so much your candor and your and this and the story there that unfortunately, as you mentioned, probably repres is representative of there's others, uh, other stories like that. I I I don't even like the word cringe as I think about that question. Um, there are some people who in leadership treat moments in their company, moments in their uh in the existence or the history of their business or whatever it may be as life and death, and then there's moments that really are. So thank you for sharing that. And may we all recognize the reality of our context and and uh and just understand fully what's what's at stake in some of these conversations when but I feel like I I feel like I owe you a cringeworthy one.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

I can give you one too, real quick. Is uh when we were we we were in Afghanistan in 2010 and we were doing a mission called Village Stability Operations. And I was a lieutenant colonel at that time. I was a pretty senior Green Beret. And you know, Green Berets, what we do differently than Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, is is is they're very good at coming in on a target. They take the target down and then they come off the target very quickly. They usually do the mission themselves, Delta Force Rangers, SEALs. Whereas Green Berets work by with and through indigenous populations. We we we are advisors. So we we'll go in with 12 and come out with 1200, like you saw in the movie 12 Strong. Uh, and so our bread and butter is relationships. Our bread and butter is rapport building. Our bread and butter is social capital, you know, building, building trust where there is none and then mobilizing those relationships to get on top of the enemy from the inside out. Uh, it's a very unconventional approach. But, you know, we pride ourselves on our relationship acumen, our interpersonal skills. And I remember we were engaging this one village elder that was a very tough cookie, and uh I was going out to kind of maybe lend some support to that. This was a village elder we really needed to work with in a in a very dynamic, contentious area. And the captain there was a very good captain. He was a seasoned, he was junior to me, but he was the captain on the ground where I was the program manager in and out of these places, fly in, fly out. And I'd kind of, I think, maybe even started to believe my own press a little bit because I was pretty good at these negotiations and I was pretty good at uh you know strategic influence. And I'd been doing this a long time and flew into this area and you know, started meeting with this elder and and uh and um I remember I was pushing pretty hard for him to work with us and um the elder kind of excused himself for a second and I said to Rob, I said, Rob, you know, we need to kind of get moving on this. What do you think we need to do next? He said, We need to keep drinking the tea, sir. Slow down. And I and I was like, I just got schooled by a captain on the very thing that I should be teaching him more of, and and it was very cringeworthy uh because I'd allowed myself to get so programmatic, like we do as leaders. Next thing, what's the next thing? Let's go, let's go. And I had forgotten that the you you you know, you build the trust first, you build the rapport first, then you talk about whatever you're gonna talk about. And I had violated kind of a golden rule of special forces right in front of a you know a junior officer that really I should have been modeling that for. And thank goodness he was competent enough to and and had enough moral courage to say, hey sir, slow down here. Like you're the one violating this right now. We need to we need to focus on what's important, which is this relationship. So there's a cringe worthy one for you.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

I appreciate that. That's that's a great story. So you have studied leadership, you've led people uh into really high stress situations and high stakes um contexts. You've also written about it, you think about it, you're and you're coaching and teaching and training people on it now. What's something you used to think was great leadership? Uh, but now you look back and you say, oh, that sure wasn't. That wasn't good leadership at all. But you used to think it was something that was really powerful and important, but now you look back and you just recognize, you just think about it differently.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

I think, I think the whole kind of uh performative nature of leadership and the way that you know in the military, you were you were evaluated uh against your peers, and it was it was this performance-oriented thing where you know you were given these standards and you achieved those standards, and then if you if you met you know exceeded the standards, you were ranked above your peers. Uh, and and it became at the time, I you know, you you couldn't help but get a little bit caught up in it, I suspect, because um, you know, it was it was the system, right? And so not only was I rated that way, but I rated others that way. And so it became uh, I don't know that I ever liked it, but it was just you accepted it. And and once I got out of the military and I and I founded my own business, founded my own nonprofit, I realized that that whole it what it did was it created, Matt, this zero defect mentality where you're you're afraid to mess up, you're afraid to make a mistake, you're afraid to put yourself out there and take a chance and and really try to, you know, um take risk. And and and and it became it became uh a model for risk aversion, right? So and and I see it now in the military, I see it now in government service, uh, I see it everywhere, and I don't like it. I I don't like the model. I I think that anything that is is so performance-based that you you you just basically dismiss risk from your vocabulary or struggle because you don't want to be perceived as weak or you don't want to be perceived as flawed. When in reality, for leaders, I mean, we are flawed. We're we're as flawed or more flawed than anybody else. And I I really love now the this whole, that's why I love the the idea of your podcast and your platform is this notion that it all starts with struggle. I mean, Daniel Cole in the Little Book of Talent says that struggle is a biological necessity. Uh so I think that those that's probably the biggest, that's the biggest example I could think of. And it's not just in the military, is it? I mean, it's corporate America, uh, it's it's anything with the government where you are you're held to this, frankly, just an unreachable standard. And and and there's no consideration or integration of struggle and our flaws as the baseline for how we lead. It's it's all performative and it's false. And I think it it just creates this really, really perverse culture of zero defect and no failure, which is of course not possible.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

And as we often talk about with different clients and groups we speak with in our in our work, when you're faking it, the only person you're really fooling is yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Your team, your team already knows your challenges and your weaknesses. They know, they see it, they they're waiting for you to catch up and admit it.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

That's right. That's 100% right. And they know they know you better than you know yourself in many cases, because they're out there in the trenches doing it. And, you know, I the best leaders I had in the military, Matt, honestly, were the ones that would say things like, Hey boys, I I'm not sure what we do next year. I got nothing. What do you guys think? Uh and I, you know, you those were the guys that you would run through walls for because because they understood that they they they had limitations and that that now that's not to say that I do think there is there is this thing that, you know, fear is contagious, but I think leadership is too. I do think there is a time as leaders when we have we have to model um a higher standard. We have to model, you know, even when we're afraid, when we're we're skeptical. Um it's not that we don't it's not that we don't feel fear or we feel reluctance or we feel self-consciousness. But what we do with it has to be different than than others. I think what how we how we manage our energy in those moments and how we show up, we cannot, you know, fear is contagious. And so if you allow fear to uh permeate your body and your existence, or you allow tension before you get up in front of people at a sales meeting to overwhelm your nervous system, then you look like you don't trust yourself. And that is very difficult for people in a high-stakes situation to follow you if you look like you don't trust yourself. So it's a it's a tough needle to thread because you want to be real and authentic. But I also believe you got to be careful that you don't turn it into a therapy session in front of your people. That that's not helpful either.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to put it that. So in your life and in your career, you have been exposed to many different leaders. Uh, some that you probably worked for, some that you have you work with now, even in a variety of settings and contexts, as I mentioned. What's a behavior that you've recognized uh in a uh, at least from your perspective, a bad leader uh that you promised yourself I will never repeat what I just saw them do? You have any moments like that?

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, unfortunately I have a few, and I'm sure you do too. Uh most people engaged in this podcast do as well. Um, and I like the way you frame that because my father, he was a wildland firefighter, Rex man, he used to always tell me that you can learn as much or more from a bad leader as you can a good one and just how not to show up. Um I guess I guess the one I would I hate to say it, but I I would say the leadership, unfortunately, most recently w after I got out of the military, with within the government, though, uh with on on the political side, on the military side, and on the State Department side of the abandonment of our allies in Afghanistan uh in 2021 when the decision was made to pull out of Afghanistan, which okay, that's a that's a political decision. I respect that, but the way in which we did it, where within a 24 to 48 hour, we wholesale abandoned uh a 20-year ally and left them inside Afghanistan, these commandos, these special forces, these interpreters, these these female ministers who were, you know, courageously stepping into their role as leaders, as women in a society that did not allow that. We left them to be executed, tortured, uh made to disappear. We did that with with no regard for the outcome and or the impact it would have on our veteran population, uh, our Green Berets and others who built 20 years of their life by advising these people and sticking with them and never uh you know, never abandoning them. And and the thing I'll end this with, Matt, is like in Afghanistan, in Iraq, you know, whether you were a Green Beret or not, you were you were, we didn't fight that war alone. We fought it alongside our Iraqi partners, we fought it alongside our Afghan partners, and you were held to a very tough standard. It was called Shona Bashona in Afghanistan, which is Dari for shoulder to shoulder. And you were held to a standard. If you abandoned an ally on the battlefield, or if you, you know, put yourself in an advantageous situation that excluded them, you could be held to Uniform Code of Military Justice. You could be prosecuted for that. You could lose your career for that, or worse. And yet the very institutional leaders, I'm talking four-star generals and politicians and State Department diplomats, the very people that held us to that standard for 20 years, when it became politically inconvenient, just went silent and left an entire generation of veterans to try to rescue our allies with no assistance. That was the worst, worst demonstration of institutional leadership I have seen in 30 years of leading men and women, both on and off the battlefield. It was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. So much so that I wrote a book about it, I wrote a play about it, it's been option for a movie, and I'm absolutely committed to illuminating that and talking about it until I die because it cannot be repeated.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Learn example. So in your various contexts, another question when you walk in the room or when you are working with a group of leaders, what's a what's a leadership red flag for you that when you walk in, or if you spend a few minutes, or maybe it's a couple hours with a particular leader or group of leaders, what's a red flag that you can spot almost instantly, but it it really uh makes you aware of what you're dealing with.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

So I do a lot of consulting, I do a lot of work with senior leadership teams all over the world. And and the first thing is if I walk in that room and the leader's doing all the talking, if the leader's in there just talking nonstop and nobody else is talking, that's a that's an indicator to me right there that you've got basically uh totalitarianism going on of some kind, you know. Uh that's usually the first thing that pops in my mind. Uh another thing is if I go in a and if I go in a room pretty quick and uh everybody's phones are out and no one's talking to each other. They're just all on their phones waiting for the meeting to start. It's another one. Uh and then if there's just an endless array of PowerPoint you know, death by PowerPoint is usually an indicator to me um that you've got you've overindexed. in the digital domain and you've lost you've lost the bubble on uh interpersonal connection. And so and you're hiding behind you're hiding. You're you know you're hiding behind data stats numbers and the heartbeat is has been lost. So those are those are three that just right out of the can jump out of me.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

I appreciate those. Go back to that first one for just a second. I'm curious when you are in the room and you realize that the uh the one person seems to be uh the only one speaking do you ever call them on that? How how do you handle that in the moment when you're there to either observe or uh maybe you're there to um present and other things but uh how do how do you handle that or do you just kind of let it go?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

I absolutely do. I think it's real important if we're gonna coach leaders right one of the first things that that we need to do is we're gonna coach leaders. My father taught me this he was a great but he was a great leadership coach and he coached firefighters. But what he would always do and I loved it he would get permission from the very beginning. Like if I'm gonna coach you let's talk about how I'm gonna play and let's talk about how you're gonna play right so you brought me in here to coach you which means it doesn't mean that I'm better at leadership than you it simply means that you're close to the problem you're gonna miss things because you can't see the forest for the trees you're in it. So I assume you're bringing me in here because you want me to be that extra set of eyes for you and you want me to tell you the truth. Is that true? Yes that's true. Okay cool. Then can we talk about what that looks like because here's how I like to do that. When I see something that is off uh I want to make sure that I call it out as quickly as possible but not interrupt the flow of your meetings. How would you like me to do that? And then we have a conversation around that the key here and then you arrive at and then and then you arrive at a set of norms and standards for how you're gonna coach I put it in writing at that point. I'm like if it's okay with you I'm gonna summarize this and get it back to you and and then I'll usually have that conversation with the senior leader and his senior leadership team. Now I'll usually have it with the boss first but then do I have permission to have this with your whole team too and we have that conversation okay I'm gonna roll all this up and this is going to be how I operate with you guys for the next six months. And I just do I have everybody's and I go down the line do I have your permission to do this. And once you get their permission to do that and you've got norms and standards people hate to violate their own rules they hate it. And so so now what I've done is I've I've obtained permission to interrupt I've obtained permission to interject I've obtained permission to coach when risk was low. Now I can implement it when the emotions are high. And if they if they pivot on me and they're like whoa no and I'm like hey hold on now remember the rule like the rules we said that I'm able to do this and they'll be oh yeah okay you know and and I can true back to to what we agreed upon. I if you don't do that what's going to happen is you're the you'll end up becoming the bad guy. This is you become the guy that everybody rolls their eyes at. You become the guy that's interrupting the flow. And that how much longer is he here? You know so that's kind of how I come at it and uh I found that and I did it in the military I do it in corporate America and I think it it works pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Yeah yeah we take I take the similar approach and so I I I love the idea of what you just said uh taking care of the details when it's low stress or no stress. So when the stress arrives you're ready to go and it's just that preparedness piece that is so important.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

We have a a a a saying Matt that might translate very well in your world is we have a saying in special forces because we go into these low trust, high risk places and you know you you're talking with this elder that's looking at you from a furrowed brow and he's had 30 years, 40 years of exposure to conflict from the Russians to you to the Taliban and you're you're here in front of this guy and he's got an AK-47 to his right and a cup of green tea to his left and you just want the guy to pick up the green tea and and have a conversation and then another sip of green tea and then until you know until ultimately there is social capital, those tangible, intangible linkages in place that is binding between the two of you, whether that's friendship, loyalty, trust, rapport, whatever it is, any combination that's what you're going for here. But that's not that different than everyday life, right? That's not that different than leadership in in the world you and I live in. So we had a saying that was you build trust when risk is low and you leverage it when the stakes are high. And that's generally that is not unique to special forces. That is that is normally how humans operate you never want to try to build trust in a crisis you never want to try to build trust during COVID. You don't want to build trust during a recession you want to build trust when the sun is shining and you want to leverage that trust when the rains come that's just how humans are I love that that's so good.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

So you have probably in uh your work experience had a leader that you followed that maybe in the moment or the moments or the season you were in they may have uh made some of your work I don't know miserable but you still learned lessons during the middle of that do you have any good stories about a moment where maybe you there was a leader who made your work miserable but you still found value in the lessons that you learned during that season.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah there was a uh one of my one of my commanders he was a mentor of mine for um years uh off and on you know because special forces is a very small community Matt and and there's only like 6500 green berets out of 1.4 million in the military so we're a very small community and then within that you have five groups and then I was you know when you're a part of a group you're regionally oriented you have culture language so you don't really leave that group that much you're you know your leaders are you're you're with each other pretty much your whole career and so I had a a boss his name was Ed Reeder and uh he and I I worked under him in various capacities from the time I was a senior captain until I was a lieutenant colonel and I retired and he was a two-star general and you know he was a massive guy his father was a Vietnam War veteran a paratrooper Ed Reeder was iconic in special forces he had fought in the El Salvador campaign just cause Afghanistan I mean like this dude was just and he and he was built like a silverback gorilla I mean like in fact his call sign was the silverback you know and uh big big fella and just imposing figure you know um and I was his operations officer on more than one occasion and he he just would ride me into the dirt you know expectation wise and you did not want to make him angry uh because he would come at you with all four feet uh and there was one occasion where we were going into Afghanistan on our second deployment I think and we were trying to get our mission statement right and uh in the military uh I actually again I think this is universal I think every mission statement should be this way but in the military your mission statement is very perfect very very simple task and purpose what and why that's it like that's so but we were establishing our mission statement for the whole deployment that was coming up and there was a lot of change happening in the country. We had democratic elections the Afghans were starting to assert themselves more so you know you needed a new mission statement that was different than the group before and even different when we had been there before so he he he took a handful of us his trusted leaders and he put us in a room and he's like come up with a mission statement and then what happens is you brief that mission statement back to the commander we briefed it back no I don't like it go back again he'd give a little guidance we'd work on it several more hours come back nope that's still not there and sometimes he wouldn't give us any guidance just keep working and this went on for days I mean days and we still got a whole plan to write and and I'm getting angry because I'm thinking we we are not going to get the whole plan done you know and and finally um he could sense my frustration and he and he you know rather than landing on my chest cavity he pulled me outside and he said Scotty he said you you guys are close he goes but listen if the mission statement's wrong the whole plan's wrong if if what you're going to do and why you're going to do it are not in alliance with my intent then how's the plan going to be any good? The details won't matter because what and why are wrong. And it and I really was kind of embarrassed honestly at that point because I was like man he's exactly right and so we we went back in and we you know we took a deep breath and we kept going and and it and eventually we landed on a good mission statement and it guided us through an eight month deployment. But I never forgot that. In fact I've done a lot of mission work you've probably done the same where you work with like leaders and you try to help them identify their purpose and their mission and it's hard. And when you put people in a room and you have really candid conversations about who we are and why we do what we do that is probably one of the hardest conversations you'll ever have I mean the fat and hair is flying everywhere. But what I learned from that was that's necessary. That's just absolutely necessary. And if you if you cut corners on that guaranteed your plan will fail and and you will you will be you will shortchange the people that you serve because your what and why are wrong. So that's probably the the biggest one I could think of lesson wise that just has stayed with me to this day because it's such a hard conversation to have but so necessary.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah I appreciate that it ties directly into one of our core principles know know where you're going and why you know you got to know why. And that is such a great reminder.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

You do Matt and you know here's a little bit on the science side of that too you know I as Green Berets we study human nature and the human condition and um one of the things in my book Generosity of scars and even my book before that Nobody's coming to save you that I talk a lot about is what we call the human operating system like the what our our primal brain and how we navigate the world. And one of the things that Dr. Ivan Tyrrell says in the in the in in his work The Human Givens is that we are meaning seeking meaning assigning creatures we we have a mandate our brain has a mandate to make sense of the world your associates, your clients, your employees, your children, ourselves we all have this make sense mandate that we're trying to make sense of the world and as leaders one of the biggest responsibilities we have and one of the greatest services we can do to the people we serve, to our children, to the travel ball team we coach, is to help people make sense of things. As leaders, that's our job is to help people make sense of things because that's what we're all trying to do. We're all trying to make sense of things and in today's business world and the trust recession and the complex environments we live in, if you're not helping your people make sense of the ambiguity and the complexity then what are we doing as leaders?

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Like what are we really doing if we're not helping our people make sense of things yeah yeah I think one of the best ways to help in sense making is storytelling. Oh man you got that right and as a as a warrior storyteller as I described you at the opening uh you've done a great job already in this show and so just uh thrilled I've got a couple more questions for you uh one I suspect that when you think about your current leadership style uh you didn't arrive there overnight so this there may be more than one pathway to this current leadership style especially and I'm always fascinated when I talk to people who have military experience because the leadership structure and the performative nature that you were describing earlier is often comes up but you have a leadership style of your own.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

When you think about the journey to get there what was there a mistake somewhere along the way that helped shape your leadership your current leadership style uh I think so yeah I think probably what I would say was uh you know well there's my current leadership style is informed by two things really connecting like your life depends on it which is you know origins although we've been beyond special forces like to my father who taught me that as a wildland firefighter he he was very much on that so so so this idea of of human connection and then deep purpose you know my dad calls it leaving tracks and I think the mistake for me the the human connection piece I've always valued and while I've made mistakes in that over time I I think I've always stayed true to that where I think I really made a fundamental mistake in my leadership style around was around purpose. And I lost my purpose when I came out of the military. I lost my identity I went into a very very dark place in my transition from the military in 2013. I had not dealt with a lot of the things that come with combat more, you know, moral injury survivor's guilt some post-traumatic stress and I did not deal with those things. I just came out of the military and and tried to become what society wanted me to become or what I thought it wanted me to become. Everything was fine on the outside I had a job I was writing a book my kids were still at home I was married my marriage was still intact but I was falling apart on the inside and I allowed myself to to almost become well I was suicidal. You know I almost took my life and and and I allowed myself to get to that depth of depression and just darkness because I lost my purpose. I lost my identity I I did not leave myself I did not care for myself I did not respond to the warning signs that I was being given and I became isolated. And when I became isolated I lost my meaning I lost my purpose and I almost lost my life and and and and it was actually of all things storytelling that brought me back into the light allowed me to make sense of things that didn't make sense and it saved me. And then it gave me a vehicle by which to bridge the civil civil military gap into other places and show up relevant to other people but uh that mistake nearly killed me. And and so now I'm very adamant about with corporate leaders senior I don't care who they are. I I don't I will I stood in a closet with a pistol under my chin. I don't care who it is and how senior they are if I see what we call the allostatic load which is a cumulative load of stress if I see it in their eyes or I can smell it on and I can smell it on people I'm gonna say something to them. I'm gonna say something to them like how are you doing? When's the last time you actually did some recovery what's going on right? I don't care because I know how how quickly it can happen. And we're losing our senior leaders in droves right now, maybe not always to suicide but to all ranges of mental health and and and cumulative stress and um you know we're not any good to anybody if we make it through all this stuff we make it through, get to the finish line and then collapse in a heath at our kids' birthday party or our grandkids' birthday party. So that was the big mistake for me I almost let it kill me but it became as you often say on your podcast it became a pivotal moment for me to actually parlay it into something good.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Such a powerful story thank you so much for sharing that so a lot of people who listen to our podcast as we're uh tracking some of this and as I hear from people are fairly new in leadership, uh young professionals, emerging professionals, maybe they're leading teams for the first time maybe some who have been leading teams for a long time will appreciate this question as well. What would you tell somebody who is in a leadership role about failure or what do you tell people as you proactively go into organizations and help train and coach and teach uh what do you tell leaders about failure I'm I'm very honest about it.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

You know I I always go to the science of it like first because as a Green Beret, you know we look at the human nature of of how we how we lead and we lead in some very rough places and and so if we get it wrong people die. But but I think for all of us it comes down to understanding the human operating system understanding your own nature understanding the nature of those who serve um and and let's just face it um struggle is you're either in it you just left it or you're going back into it and that's not just you that's the people you lead that's your children that's your boss you know that's the president of the United States it it we no one is in fact again read the little book of talent and and listen to how Daniel Coyle talks about high performers. And he says that when the brain is faced with new information whether that's a loss of a parent or you know having to learn how to shoot a jump shot the brain has to build new neural pathways to make sense of the new challenge and that that clunky awful feeling that we experienced during that is struggle. And struggle therefore is not something that happens to a few of us it's a biological necessity. Well failure is nothing more than the manifestation of the brain trying to make its way make sense of things failures are just episodic manifestations of the brain moving through a process from struggle to resolution. That's what's happening. So failure is is literally it's a milestone along the path to resolution. So it's necessary it's it's it's it's grist for the mill as a leader. It's actually Joseph Campbell in the in the in the hero with a thousand faces he says the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. And that treasure is failure is struggle because if we can take that and repurpose it into the service of others oftentimes through the stories that we tell then you become relatable to people you you people locate themselves in your stories and they go wow I had no idea that he had been through that I had no she has actually been through what I've been through and the armor comes off and people get ready to listen and they start to your failure as a young associate in the job that you're now sharing with this young employee who just screwed up, they've located themselves in your story and they're now autobiographically listening. They're processing their own lived experience in the safety of your story. And they're the learning is accelerated it's crystallized and guess what? They now feel reciprocity towards you as a leader. They feel a reciprocal loyalty to you. They will run through walls for you.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

So man you gotta have it like in in and if you deny failure if you deny struggle and don't integrate it into how you lead not only will you have a gap in the people that you lead I think they trust you less I think you'll actually lose trust I love that last week I spoke to a group of small business owners very small business owners who were in the process of either beginning to hire their first managers or had just hired their first managers and we were talking about a lot of different things um one of the things that came up was the tension that emerges during the middle of that transition between letting go and handing off and you know I'm in control I'm not what if it goes wrong there's that tension and what I told them was uh one of the things I told him was the tension is the transition. It's not it's not going wrong it's going right you have to have the tension you have to have something to persevere through to get to the other side you have to agitate you have to you have to walk through some things to get to the other side and I think that's what you just described as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

It's so true man you're right you're absolutely right uh you know tension in that sense is necessary struggle to resolution is the pattern that humans have navigated this world for hundreds of thousands of years. And if you try to just take the struggle out and you go right to the resolution let me I'll ask anybody listening to this have you ever sat in the audience and someone walked out on stage and they're going to tell you like their journey, right? They're gonna explain, they're gonna give you a motivational speech. They walk out and the first thing they do is start bragging about what they've done and then they tell you the three ways to be great like what they've done. Are you interested in that? Does that resonate with you? Right? Does it do you feel anything like reciprocal toward that person? Versus someone who walks out and they talk about their upbringing and what they went through as a kid and what they learned along the way and they're actually talking about stuff that you can tell is not easy for them. And then they say let me tell you what I learned along the way man you're leaning in you're you're you're right there with them you can't look away from them.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

You don't even remember that you own a cell phone at them that's available to all of us in every situation not just on the stage that is such a good segue to talk about I'm gonna show this to those watching this your new book The Generosity of Scars. What a great idea. What a great thought. But I am certain that there is a story behind the book, a story that motivated you to write the book. Tell us a little bit about the book. I think it's a wonderfully powerful leadership concept, similar to even this the premise for this show, right? There are things that did not go well that we have learned from and can absolutely change the trajectory of our life and our leadership and the way we try to navigate all things. So tell us a little bit about the book and what you're excited about as it has uh so much potential to make a difference in the world.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Well, thanks, Matt. You know how there's like so many, remember in the in the in the war on terror post 9-11, there were so many military men and women that came out that had, you know, they they were snipers, they were special operators, and they did all these Herculean things, and then they they parlayed that into a speaking career or a coaching career. And it's amazing. Like, well, I did none of that. Like I came out of the military and I had a very dark transition, very difficult, very embarrassing. I almost took my life and it became one of the ugliest, most embarrassing moments of my life. In fact, I didn't even tell my family and my children, my wife, that I had been suicidal until 2019, and I almost took my life in 2015. You know, I was so dark. And but but what did happen was that uh a mentor of mine got me connected with storytelling as a modal and alternative modality for healing myself. I went to several storytelling workshops and I found that just by telling the story of my guys and that that I served with, I could uh storytelling has these properties that's been around for thousands of years. When we tell stories and we get real, uh it actually is a sense-making tool. Our brain works in metaphor, it works in narrative. And so it actually helped me fill in the gaps for a lot of things I was feeling survivor's guilt about, moral injury. And I actually started to make sense of things that hadn't made sense, and I really liked it. And but more importantly, Matt, in a not long after that, I was in New York City with a veteran transition in event. And it and I talk about this in the book, but a buddy of mine, James, an iconic special operator, confided in me uh on a break that he was thinking about checking out. And in a panic, I was terrified. I didn't know what to say. I blurted out my standing in a closet with a pistol, and I had not told anybody, not even my life. And he, I could feel his distant stare kind of come back, and he was now focused on me in the middle of that man half at Hatton Traffic. He said, Are you serious? I said, Yeah. And and he I said, You're not alone, bro. And and and and I could just tell that he was with me and we we were reconnected and we went and got something to eat, and you know, it brought him back to me. Like that most embarrassing scar, that struggle, uh, had been repurposed into something that served him. And today he's not only is he healthy, he's very active in uh overcoming veteran suicide. And, you know, that was a pivotal moment for me, Matt, when I was, I thought, man, okay, like not only has storytelling helped me make sense of things that don't make sense and heal myself, but now I just used it in a real world moment where that bridged, that actually allowed him to locate himself in my story. And and what I learned later was that when we take our scars, our struggles, and we repurpose them through stories, what happens is your struggle, that moment that you don't want to tell others, that you don't want to tell yourself, where you have to take some armor off and really be relatable to your teenager about addiction or your associate about a mistake that they made or you made. What happens is this thing called narrative transportation, where immediately we we are transported into the story of the other person. And we've all experienced this. Where now we are literally feeling what they're feeling. We're smelling the air as they describe it. And then we start to autobiographically listen. We start to process our own lived experience in the safety of their story. My father's battle with cancer now becomes your sister's battle with cancer, or maybe your own battle with cancer, or man, I hope I don't get cancer. And and people are processing their own lived experience in the safety of your story. And that's what this book, that's what this book is all about. It's all about how do we take our struggles and repurpose them into stories that serve other people from the stage in one-on-one sales calls and talking with your children in coaching. And it doesn't just tell you how to design those stories, but it also helps you with the embodiment and the presentation of it. If you have to give a PowerPoint pitch, if you have to get on and give a TED talk, how do you do that fully embodied? And and the last thing I'll say on it, Matt, is I became obsessed over this. I've done three TED talks, I've coached dozens of TED speakers, hundreds of keynotes. Um, I've I have been on CNN, Fox, I've written a New York Times bestseller book, all to get better at storytelling. And to complete my midlife crisis, I've written two plays and learned how to act at age 50. Uh, and I put all of that into this book to help people, you know, no matter what you do for a living, this book will help you be a better storyteller in the key moments of your life. And and this is how you distinguish yourself in this realm of AI and trust recession that we live in.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah. Well, you are speaking my language 15 years ago, Scott. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on storytelling as a strategy for leading change. How about you've mentioned sense making? You're the only person I've I don't think anybody ever read it, uh, which is not uncommon for a dissertation, but the idea that storytelling allows us to make sense of the world, to frame the things that are going on around us, and then on the other side, we get to to restory the future. Uh, we we get to think about a new story, and you have done that in your work. Uh, you've done it in this book. It's a great read. Uh, I cannot wait to see the movie one day that you described earlier. Uh, man, I just appreciate you so much. This has been so much fun, and I just am grateful for the conversation today. Thank you, first of all, again, for your service to our country. Uh, both officially uh as a as a Green Beret, but even post-retirement, you're still serving your country well because you're working with people that are helping to make a difference around the world. And so I thank you for that. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for reminding us that leadership is not about perfection, it's about connection, uh, which uh I think you said earlier is is just it's not transactional. Leadership's leadership's personal and relational. For everyone listening, if you want to go deeper, check out Scott's new book, The Generosity of Scars and his work at Rooftop Leadership. And as always, please remember your bad days are not disqualifications, they're your greatest leadership training ground. So push through to the other side, persevere, and see what can happen, uh, as Scott would say, when we learn from our scars. Yeah, and as we move and grow forward. So thank you for listening today, Scott. Thanks for being here. For all those that are listening, if this episode resonated with you, please like, share, download, and subscribe, and even review uh the Bad Days Leadership podcast. We thank you for being here today, and we'll see you next time.